Edward Feser's Blog, page 19

Davies on classical theism and divine freedom

I’ve long regarded Brian Davies’ An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion as the best introduction to that field on the market.  A fourth edition appeared not too long ago, and I’ve been meaning to post something about it.  Like earlier editions, it is very clearly written and accessible, without in any way compromising philosophical depth.  Its greatest strength, though, is the attention it gives the classical theist tradition in general and Thomism in particular, while still covering all the ground the typical analytic philosophy of religion text would (and, indeed, bringing the classical tradition into conversation with this contemporary work).  The fourth edition adds some new material along these lines.

Davies is well-known for contrasting classical theism (represented by Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Maimonides, Avicenna, et al.) with what he calls the “theistic personalism” that is at least implicit in thinkers like Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, open theists, and others.  The difference between the views is that theistic personalists reject divine simplicity and, as a consequence, often reject other classical attributes such as immutability, impassibility, and eternity.  (Davies acknowledges that not all those he labels “theistic personalists” agree on every important issue and that they don’t necessarily self-identify as theistic personalists.  But he’s identifying a trend of thinking that really does exist in contemporary philosophy of religion, even if those contributing to it do not always realize they are doing so.)

Among the important additions to the new edition are a few pages addressing the question of whether, given the significant differences between classical theists’ and theistic personalists’ conceptions of God, they are even really referring to the same thing when they use the word “God.”  Davies suggests that it may be that “if differences in beliefs about God on the part of classical theists and theistic personalists are serious and irreconcilable, then classical theists and theistic personalists do not believe in the same God” (p. 19).  But he also urges caution and acknowledges that everything hinges on what counts as “serious and irreconcilable.”  He does not attempt to resolve the matter, but recommends looking at Peter Geach’s treatment of the question (which I discussed in a post some years back).

Several new pages are also added to the previous edition’s discussion of divine freedom in the chapter on divine simplicity.  (Davies’ views on this issue were the subject of another post from years ago.)  Critics of divine simplicity often argue that it is incompatible with God’s having freely created the universe.  For if God could have done other than what he has in fact done, doesn’t that entail that God is changeable, contrary to divine simplicity?  And if he is in fact unchangeable or immutable, doesn’t that entail that he could not have done otherwise, and thus created of necessity rather than freely?  In response, Davies points out, first, that creating freely simply does not in fact entail changing.  Certainly it simply begs the question to assume otherwise.  For the classical theist, God creates eternally or atemporally, and what is eternal or atemporal does not undergo change.  Still, he could have done otherwise than create, so that this eternal act of creation is free.

Second, Davies notes that in order to show that an eternal and immutable God’s act of creation would be unfree, one would have to show that there is something either internal to God’s nature or external to him that compels him to create.  But given that the divine nature is as classical theists, on independent grounds, argue it to be (pure actuality, perfect, omnipotent, etc.) there can be no need in God for anything distinct from him, so that nothing in his nature can compel him to create.  And since, the classical theist also argues (and again on independent grounds) there is nothing apart from God that God did not create, there can be nothing distinct from him that compels him to create.  Hence we cannot make sense of God’s being in any way compelled to create, and thus must attribute freedom to him.

Third, Davies notes that those who suppose that freedom in God would entail changeability often presuppose an anthropomorphic conception of divine choice.  In particular, they imagine it involving a temporal process of weighing alternative courses of action before finally deciding upon one of them.  But that is not what God is like, given that he is eternal or outside time, and that he is omniscient and doesn’t have to “figure things out” through some kind of reasoning process.

Fourth, Davies notes that critics of the doctrine of divine simplicity argue that the doctrine implies that God is identical to his act of creation, and that accordingly, if God exists necessarily, then his act of creation is necessary.  But if it is necessary, they conclude, then it cannot be free.  In reply, Davies distinguishes between an actconsidered as something an agent does, and what results from an act, which is external to the agent.  He then argues that even if God’s act, being identical to him, is necessary, it doesn’t follow that the result of that act (namely, the created world) is necessary.

Finally, Davies emphasizes that “to speak of God as simple is not to attribute a property to God but to deny certain things when it comes to God” (p. 179).  Here, as he has in other work, Davies emphasizes the idea that the ascription of attributes to God should be understood as an exercise in negative or apophatic theology.  The main arguments for classical theism, he points out, emphasize both that the world is contingent or conditioned in various respects, and that an ultimate explanation of the world must be unconditioned and non-contingent in those respects.  (Though, just in case he wouldn’t himself use it, I should note that the language of “conditioned” and “unconditioned” in this context is mine, not Davies’.)   In particular, God must not be changeable, must not have properties that are distinct from each other or from him, and so on.  This is what it means to characterize him as simple.  But by the same token, he must not be compelled to create by anything either internal to his nature or outside of him.  Hence divine simplicity, divine freedom, and the relationship between them are properly understood as characterizations of what God is not.

Augustine on divine punishment of the good alongside the wicked

Many today labor under the delusion that the reality of suffering is a difficulty for Christianity – as if Christian doctrine would lead us to expect little or no suffering, so that its adherents should be flummoxed by suffering’s prevalence.  As I have discussed in previous articles, this is the reverse of the truth.  The Catholic faith teaches that suffering is the inexorable consequence of original sin and past actual sin.  It is an essential part of the long and painful process of sanctification, of overcoming sinful habits of thought and action.  It is the inevitable concomitant of the persecution Christians must face for preaching the Gospel and condemning the world’s wickedness.  It is an inescapable punishment for sin, which we must embrace in a penitential spirit.  By way of suffering we pay both our own temporal debt and that of others for whom we might offer up our suffering.  By way of it we most closely unite ourselves to Christ’s Passion.  The extent and depth of human suffering thus confirmsrather than disconfirms the claims of Christianity.

As I proposed in those earlier articles, bafflement at suffering is less the cause than the consequence of the modern West’s apostasy from the Catholic faith.  It also reflects the softness and decadence of a dying civilization that has become accustomed to affluence and cannot fathom a higher good beyond ease and beyond this life, for the sake of which we might embrace suffering.  Nor is it apostates alone who exhibit this blindness.  The spiritual rot has eaten its way deep into the Church, afflicting even those who are otherwise loyal to orthodoxy and Christian morality.  And in our disinclination to accept suffering, we are only ensuring ourselves more of it.

Here as elsewhere, the great St. Augustine sees clearly and speaks frankly where we moderns deceive ourselves and obfuscate.  In chapters 8-10 of Book I of The City of God, he discusses how and why evil and suffering befall the good as well as the wicked in this life.  As our own age descends into ever deeper moral, political, social, and economic disorder, we would do well to meditate upon his bracing teaching.  If the faithful believe they will or ought to be spared the brunt of the punishment that the sins of our civilization are liable to bring down upon it, they are sorely mistaken.  Things are likely to get worse for all of us, even if only so that divine providence can ultimately bring something better out of the chaos.

In chapter 8, Augustine notes that while there is in this life some connection between evildoing and suffering on the one hand, and righteousness and blessings on the other, it is very far from tight.  The wicked enjoy many good things, while the good suffer much misfortune.  To be sure, this will be redressed in the afterlife, when the good will be rewarded with eternal happiness and the wicked with eternal torment.  “But as for the good things of this life, and its ills,” Augustine writes, “God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.” 

When we wonder why God permits us to suffer even though we try to obey him, part of the reason is precisely that we might be saved.  For if we pursue righteousness only when it is easy to do so, our virtue is bound to be shallow and unlikely to last.  Nor, if the connection between virtuous behavior and material blessings is too tight, are we likely to pursue the former for the right reasons.  We cannot achieve happiness in the world to come if we become too attached to the world that is, and suffering is a means of preventing the latter.

Moreover, says Augustine, the difference between a truly righteous man and a wicked one is often exposed precisely by suffering:

Wherefore, though good and bad men suffer alike, we must not suppose that there is no difference between the men themselves, because there is no difference in what they both suffer.  For even in the likeness of the sufferings, there remains an unlikeness in the sufferers; and though exposed to the same anguish, virtue and vice are not the same thing.  For as the same fire causes gold to glow brightly, and chaff to smoke… so the same violence of affliction proves, purges, clarifies the good, but damns, ruins, exterminates the wicked.  And thus it is that in the same affliction the wicked detest God and blaspheme, while the good pray and praise.  So material a difference does it make, not what ills are suffered, but what kind of man suffers them.

Now, so far Augustine is addressing suffering that is unmerited.  But there is also suffering that good men can merit and bring upon themselves, as Augustine explains in chapter 9.  This is so in several ways.  First, of course, nobody’s perfect.  Even those who avoid the more blatant violations of Christian morality still typically exhibit moral failings of various lesser kinds:

Although they be far from the excesses of wicked, immoral, and ungodly men, yet they do not judge themselves so clean removed from all faults as to be too good to suffer for these even temporal ills.  For every man, however laudably he lives, yet yields in some points to the lust of the flesh.  Though he do not fall into gross enormity of wickedness, and abandoned viciousness, and abominable profanity, yet he slips into some sins, either rarely or so much the more frequently as the sins seem of less account.

But there is also the attitude that the good man takes toward those who do live especially wicked lives.  There are many who disapprove of such wickedness and would never practice it themselves, but who nevertheless, out of cowardice, refrain from criticizing it in others.  Here Augustine makes some remarks that are especially relevant to our times, and worth quoting at length:

Where can we readily find a man who holds in fit and just estimation those persons on account of whose revolting pride, luxury, and avarice, and cursed iniquities and impiety, God now smites the earth as His predictions threatened?  Where is the man who lives with them in the style in which it becomes us to live with them?  For often we wickedly blind ourselves to the occasions of teaching and admonishing them, sometimes even of reprimanding and chiding them, either because we shrink from the labor or are ashamed to offend them, or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing.  So that, although the conduct of wicked men is distasteful to the good, and therefore they do not fall with them into that damnation which in the next life awaits such persons, yet, because they spare their damnable sins through fear, therefore, even though their own sins be slight and venial, they are justly scourged with the wicked in this world, though in eternity they quite escape punishment.  Justly, when God afflicts them in common with the wicked, do they find this life bitter, through love of whose sweetness they declined to be bitter to these sinners.

Here Augustine teaches that it is not enough to refrain from the sins of wicked men.  The Christian must also criticize them for their wickedness, and try to get them to repent of it.  To be sure, Augustine goes on to acknowledge that there may be occasions where one might justifiably opt to postpone such criticism until an opportune moment, or refrain from it out of a reasonable fear of doing more harm than good.  But he teaches here that it is not justifiable to refrain from such criticism merely because it is difficult, or because we fear causing offense and losing friends, or because we don’t want to risk losing status or other worldly goods.  For the wicked are in danger of damnation if they do not repent, and we “wickedly blind ourselves” if we shirk our duty to encourage them to do so.  Even if we avoid damnation ourselves, we will justly suffer alongside them when divine providence visits this-worldlypunishments upon them (social and economic disorder, natural disasters, and the like). 

Here too Augustine emphasizes that God allows the good to suffer alongside the wicked in part to wean them from their attachment to this world, where their reluctance to criticize the wicked is a symptom of this attachment:

What is blame-worthy is, that they who themselves revolt from the conduct of the wicked, and live in quite another fashion, yet spare those faults in other men which they ought to reprehend and wean them from; and spare them because they fear to give offense, lest they should injure their interests in those things which good men may innocently and legitimately use – though they use them more greedily than becomes persons who are strangers in this world, and profess the hope of a heavenly country.

Augustine is especially hard on Christians (such as clergy) who do not have family obligations and the like to worry about, yet still shrink from doing their duty to condemn the wickedness that surrounds them:

[They] do often take thought of their own safety and good name, and abstain from finding fault with the wicked, because they fear their wiles and violence.  And although they do not fear them to such an extent as to be drawn to the commission of like iniquities, nay, not by any threats or violence soever; yet those very deeds which they refuse to share in the commission of they often decline to find fault with, when possibly they might by finding fault prevent their commission.  They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed; not because they see that their preservation and good name are needful, that they may be able to influence those who need their instruction, but rather because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say, their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.

The application to the present day is obvious.  Consider the sexual sins into which our age has, arguably, sunk more deeply than any previous one.  So as to avoid criticizing these sins too harshly or even talking much about them at all, even many otherwise conservative Christians lie to themselves about their gravity, pretending they are slight when in fact (and as the tradition has always insisted) they are extremely serious.  Such sins have, among their consequences: the even graver sin of murder, in the form of abortion; fatherlessness and the poverty and social breakdown that is its sequel; addiction to pornography and the marital problems it brings in its wake; the loneliness and economic insecurity of women who in their youth were used by men for pleasure, and are later unable to find husbands; a general breakdown in rationality that has now reached the point where even the objective difference between men and women is shrilly denied; and the willingness to mutilate children’s bodies in the name of this gender ideology.

Worse, many Christians deceive themselves into thinking that it is love or compassion for the sinner that prevents them from condemning these sins too harshly.  In fact, given the grave damage caused by these sins, and the difficulty so many have in extricating themselves from them, to refrain from warning others against them is the opposite of compassionate.  Yet the present age is so addicted to them that, of all sins, sexual sins are those criticism of which puts the critic at greatest danger.  People fear for their reputations, and even livelihoods, if they speak up.  Hence, as Augustine says, “their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.”

The consequence, Augustine teaches, is that many sinners who might have repented had they been warned will end up damned as a result.  And those who failed to warn them will suffer at least temporal punishments along with them, because they were too attached to the comforts of this life to help others prepare for the next.  Augustine writes:

Accordingly this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community.  They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked, though not equally with them, love this present life; while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example, might lay hold of life eternal... For so long as they live, it remains uncertain whether they may not come to a better mind.  These selfish persons have more cause to fear than those to whom it was said through the prophet, He is taken away in his iniquity, but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand (Ezekiel 33:6).

In chapter 10, Augustine hammers on the theme that the treasure of Christians is to be found in heaven and not in any of the goods of this life, and that, accordingly, no worldly suffering can possibly truly harm them.  He writes:

They should endure all torment, if need be, for Christ's sake; that they might be taught to love Him rather who enriches with eternal felicity all who suffer for Him, and not silver and gold, for which it was pitiable to suffer, whether they preserved it by telling a lie or lost it by telling the truth.  For under these tortures no one lost Christ by confessing Him...  So that possibly the torture which taught them that they should set their affections on a possession they could not lose, was more useful than those possessions which, without any useful fruit at all, disquieted and tormented their anxious owners.

As this last remark indicates, the loss of worldly blessings – material goods, reputation, friendships, health, livelihood, even life itself – is permitted by God so that we might learn not to cling to these things at the expense of the beatific vision, the value of which trumps all else.  God thus only ever permits suffering not in spite of his goodness, but rather precisely because of his goodness.  As Augustine says, there isn’t “any evil [that] happens to the faithful and godly which cannot be turned to profit,” so that, with St. Paul, “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God” (Romans 8:28).

Update on All One in Christ

Recently I was interviewed by Steve and Becky Greene on The Catholic Conversation about my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory .  You can listen to the interview here.  Author Gavin Ashenden and teacher Katherine Bennett discuss the book at the Catholic Herald’s Merely Catholic podcast, judging it “an absolute must-read for all Catholic educators.”  Meanwhile, at the Acton Institute Powerblog, Sarah Negri kindly reviews the book.  From the review:

This book is perfectly subtitled in that it spends significant time evaluating both the church’s denunciation of racism and the incompatibility of Church teaching with CRT… Readers who seek a thorough overview of the church’s statements and position on racism will find it here, and Christians who have ever experienced confusion as to whether CRT obtains as a remedy for it will come away with the understanding that Christianity and critical race theory rest on entirely different first principles; indeed, they present irreconcilable worldviews…

Despite the subtitle’s giveaway that Feser will ultimately reject CRT as contrary to church teaching, his exposé of its tenets is impressive.  Drawing mainly from Ibram X. Kendi’s and Robin DiAngelo’s bestselling popularizations of the theory, he takes time to lay out the claims of CRT’s popular proponents with precision and a fair amount of objectivity…

Perhaps the most satisfying chapter in this book is when Feser bombards that worldview with the artillery of logical principles.  He proceeds down a long line of logical fallacies committed by popular critical race theorists…

Other highlights of All One in Christ include a refreshing discussion of nationalism, patriotism, immigration, and integration, all of which pertain to any serious analysis of race and ethnicity…

The book also makes a social scientific case in support of alternative theories to CRT that align better with church teaching.  Feser provides evidence from economics, history, sociology, and psychology to counter CRT proponents’ unempirical claims and offers other explanations (such as cultural factors) for the supposed racial discrimination at the root of socioeconomic disparities…

Feser is overwhelmingly convincing in his contention that, while racism is a grave evil and remains a painful reality in our own day, a faithful Christian (or any reasonable person who cares about human flourishing) should not espouse critical race theory as a viable solution.

Negri’s main criticism of the book is the following:

One rather wonders whether Feser, out of the principle of charity, which he accuses CRT proponents of violating, ought to have engaged the academicians who promote CRT rather than its popularizers, since he demolishes the assertions of the latter so effectively.  It would have felt more like a fair fight.  But in choosing to dismantle the popular arguments of CRT, he does send in his troops where the attack is thickest, since most people’s understanding of CRT comes from its more popular version.

In response, I’d point out that these remarks are a bit misleading insofar as I do in fact also quote from and discuss the work of academic critical race theorists like Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Alan Freeman, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.  But it is true that there is a special focus on popularizers like Kendi and DiAngelo, and for precisely the reason Negri says.  I defended this approach in a recent article.

Other reviews of and interviews about All One in Christ can be found here, here, and here.

Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part VII: The influence of Kant

Immanuel Kant was, of course, not an atheist.  So why devote an entry to him in this series, thereby lumping him in with the likes of Nietzsche, Sartre, Freud, Marx, Woody Allen, and Schopenhauer?  In part because Kant’s philosophy, I would suggest, inadvertently did more to bolster atheism than any other modern system, Hume’s included.  He was, as Nietzsche put it, a “catastrophic spider” (albeit not for the reasons Nietzsche supposed).  But also in part because, like the other thinkers in this series, Kant had a more subtle and interesting attitude about religion than contemporary critics of traditional theology like the New Atheists do. 

Why do I propose that Kant’s influence did even more to bolster modern atheism than Hume’s?  Because Kant offered a positive alternative to the traditional metaphysics that upheld theism, whereas Hume’s critique is essentially negative.  To be sure, contemporary commentators are correct to hold that it is too simple to read Hume as a mere skeptic, full stop.  True, he does try to undermine traditional metaphysical views about substance, causation, the self, moral value, etc.  But he also emphasizes that the hold such notions have over common sense cannot be shaken by philosophical skepticism, since they are too deeply rooted in human psychology.  And for purposes of “common life,” they are indispensable.  Hume’s aim is merely to clip the wings of highfalutin rationalist metaphysical speculation, not to undermine the convictions of the ordinary person.

All the same, precisely for that reason, Hume’s account of philosophy, if not of common sense, is essentially destructive.  Moreover, a consistent Humean will have to take a much more modest view of natural science than contemporary atheists are wont to do – in part because of Hume’s attack on attempts to justify induction, and in part because the deliverances of modern physics are hardly less abstruse and remote from common life than the rationalist speculations he was so keen to shoot down.  A Humean must also give up a rationalistic ethics, given that, as he famously holds, there is nothing contrary to reason (but only to the sentiments of the average person) to prefer that the entire world be destroyed than that one should suffer a scratch to his finger.  Humean arguments entail a pessimism about the powers of human reason that doesn’t sit well with scientism or with dogmatic and triumphalist versions of atheism (even if many atheists and adherents of scientism naively suppose otherwise).

Kant, by contrast, tied his critique of traditional metaphysics to an essentially positive and optimistic view of what reason could accomplish.  True, he did not think reason could penetrate into the natures of things as they are in themselves.  Since that’s what traditional metaphysics claimed to do, and natural theology is grounded in such metaphysics, his position entails a critique of traditional metaphysics and natural theology.  However, in Kant’s view this entailed no doubts about the rational foundations of morality or of science (which concerns the world as it appears to us rather than as it is in itself).  A consistent Humean has to put natural theology, natural science, and ethics in the same boat.  A consistent Kantian can leave natural theology in the boat by itself.

Ultimate explanation

All the same, Kant’s critique of natural theology did not stem from the view that it is an irrational enterprise.  Quite the contrary.  The New Atheist supposes that all theology reflects an insufficient respect for reason.  Kant argues, by contrast, that in fact natural theology reflects an excessive confidence in the power of reason.  In particular, it reflects the conviction that ultimate explanation is possible, that the world can be made intelligible through and through.  Nor did Kant suppose that natural theology looked for such explanation in the crudely anthropomorphic “sky daddy” of New Atheist caricature.  Here is how he describes the basic impulse behind philosophical theism in the Critique of Pure Reason:

Reason… is impelled… to seek a resting-place in the regress from the conditioned, which is given, to the unconditioned… This is the course which our human reason, by its very nature, leads all of us, even the least reflective, to adopt…

If we admit something as existing, no matter what this something may be, we must also admit that there exists something which exists necessarily.  For the contingent exists only under the condition of some other contingent existence as its cause, and from this again we must infer yet another cause, until we are brought to a cause which is not contingent, and which is therefore unconditionally necessary…

Now… that which is in no respect defective, that which is in every way sufficient as a condition, seems to be precisely the being to which absolute necessity can fittingly be described.  For while it contains the conditions of all that is possible, it itself does not require and indeed does not allow of any condition, and therefore satisfies… the concept of unconditioned necessity…

The concept of an ens realissimum is therefore, of all concepts of possible things, that which best squares with the concept of an unconditionally necessary being; and… we have no choice in the matter, but find ourselves constrained to hold to it…

Such, then, is the natural procedure of human reason.  It… looks around for the concept of that which is independent of any condition, and finds it in that which is itself the sufficient condition of all else, that is, in that which contains all reality.  But that which is all-containing and without limits is absolute unity, and involves the concept of a single being that is likewise the supreme being. (pp. 495-97, Norman Kemp Smith translation)

Reason, Kant says, cannot be satisfied as long as the explanations it posits make reference only to what is conditioned, to contingent things.  Ultimateexplanation must posit the existence of something which is absolutely unconditioned or necessary.  This something would be a single, unified “ens realissimum” or most real being, would be devoid of any defect, and would be the source of all other reality – it would possess “the highest causality… which contains primordially in itself the sufficient ground of every possible effect” (p. 499).  Naturally, it is not the likes of Zeus or Odin that Kant has in mind, but rather the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle and Aquinas, the One of Plotinus, the Necessary Being of Leibniz, and so on.

The trouble with this sort of reasoning, Kant thinks, is not that its conclusion is false – again, he was no atheist – but rather that, given his epistemology, reason lacks the resources to transcend the empirical world and prove the existence of a necessary or unconditioned being outside it.  The notion of causality, he argues, applies only within the phenomenal world, the world of things as they appear to us, whereas reasoning to a necessary being would require applying it beyond that world, to the noumenal world or things as they are in themselves.  And we cannot, in his view, know the latter.

By no means does this make reasoning to such a divine first cause superstitious or otherwise foolish.  After all, Kant also thinks that the notions of space and time apply only within the phenomenal world and not to things as they are in themselves.  You might think it mistaken to suppose that the notions of space and time apply to things as they are in themselves, but few would regard it as superstitious, or irrational, or otherwise contemptible to do so.  By the same token, there is nothing superstitious, irrational, or otherwise contemptible in the idea of a first uncaused cause, even if one supposes, with Kant, that reason is incapable of validly drawing the inference to it. 

Again, in Kant’s view, it is not the abandonment of reason, but rather the attempt to fulfill reason’s ultimate ambitions, that yields natural theology.  And reason will remain frustrated even in the face of Kantian attempts to show that this ambition cannot be fulfilled.  It is “quite beyond our utmost efforts to satisfy our understanding in this matter” but “equally unavailing are all attempts to induce it to acquiesce in its incapacity” (p. 513).

The metaphysics of morals

“As follows from these considerations,” Kant says, “the ideal of the supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason, which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient necessary cause” (p. 517).  Note that Kant is not saying that this ideal is an unavoidable useful fiction, but rather that it is unavoidable and useful even if (in his view) unprovable. 

Even so, he does not regard the affirmation of God’s existence as groundless.  On the contrary, he famously argues that a rationale for affirming it is to be found in practical rather than pure reason, in ethics rather than in metaphysics.  Just as reason seeks an ultimate explanation, so too, Kant argues in the Critique of Practical Reason, it seeks the highest good.  And the highest good, he argues, would be the conjunction of moral virtue, which makes us worthy of happiness, with happiness itself. 

Now, we are obligated by the moral law to try to realize this highest good.  And since ought implies can, it must be possible to realize it.  Yet it is obviously not realized in this life, since virtuous people often suffer and evil people often live lives of comfort and pleasure.  Moreover, Kant thinks, its realization cannot be guaranteed in this life, since there is, he thinks, no inherent necessary correlation between the demands of the moral law and the causal order that governs the natural world.  We can make sense of such a correlation only if we postulate a supreme being who brings the two orders into correlation (in the afterlife).

Kant does not take this to be a strict proof of God’s existence, but rather an argument to the effect that it is reasonable to affirm God’s existence.  And once again, the idea is not that theism involves believing something contrary to reason, but quite the opposite.  Affirming God’s existence is, in Kant’s view, precisely what is called for in order to make sense of what reason dictates in the realm of action.

The afterlife of Hume and Kant

It is widely supposed that Hume and Kant put paid to the arguments of natural theology.  But their critiques largely presuppose their background views in epistemology and metaphysics.  If you don’t buy those views (and I don’t) you needn’t accept their critiques.  Yet Hume’s and Kant’s general epistemological and metaphysical views are hardly uncontroversial, and many who suppose their critiques of natural theology to be compelling would not accept them (if, indeed, they even know much about them). 

Moreover, as I have argued, if you do accept these background views, then to be consistent you’d have to draw other conclusions that most New Atheist types would not want to draw.  Again, if you accept a Humean critique of natural theology, then to be consistent you should also be skeptical about the claims of natural science and ethics to tell us anything about objective reality.  And if you accept a Kantian critique of natural theology, then while you can consistently take natural science and ethics to have a rational basis, you cannot consistently treat theology with the contempt that Dawkins and Co. typically do.  Hence the lessons so many have drawn from Hume’s and Kant’s critiques is not the one either of those critiques actually supports.

Related posts:

The catastrophic spider

Sexual cant from the asexual Kant

Theology and the analytic a posteriori

The problem of Hume’s problem of induction

A world of pure imagination

Hume, science, and religion

Hume, cosmological arguments, and the fallacy of composition

All One in Christ at Beliefnet

Recently I was interviewed at length by John W. Kennedy at Beliefnet about my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory .  

Earlier reviews of and interviews about the book can be found hereand here.

The teleological foundations of human rights

My essay “The Teleological Foundations of Human Rights” appears in The Cambridge Handbook of Natural Law and Human Rights , edited by Tom Angier, Iain Benson, and Mark Retter and out this month.  Here’s the abstract:

Natural law theory in the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) tradition is grounded in a metaphysics of essentialism and teleology, and in turn grounds a theory of natural rights. This chapter offers a brief exposition of the metaphysical ideas in question, explains how the A-T tradition takes a natural law moral system to follow from them, and also explains how in turn the existence of certain basic natural rights follows from natural law. It then explains how the teleological foundations of natural law entail not only that natural rights exist, but also that they are limited or qualified in certain crucial ways. The right to free speech is used as a case study to illustrate these points. Finally, the chapter explains the sense in which the natural rights doctrine generated by A-T natural law theory amounts to a theory of human rights, specifically.

Follow the link to check out the table of contents and excellent roster of contributors to the volume.

Divine freedom and necessity

In a recent article, I commented on Fr. James Dominic Rooney’s critiqueof David Bentley Hart.  My focus was, specifically, on Fr. Rooney’s objections to Hart’s view that God’s creation of the world follows inevitably from his nature.  That position, as Rooney points out, is heretical.  In the comments section at Fr. Aidan Kimel’s blog, Hart defends himself, objecting both to Rooney’s characterization of his position and to the claim that it is heretical.  Let’s take a look.

First, recall the passage from Hart’s book You Are Gods that provided the basis for Fr. Rooney’s charge: 

For God, deliberative liberty – any “could have been otherwise,” any arbitrary decision among opposed possibilities – would be an impossible defect of his freedom.  God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free… And in the calculus of the infinite, any tension between freedom and necessity simply disappears; there is no problem to be resolved because, in regard to the transcendent and infinite fullness of all Being, the distinction is meaningless… And it is only insofar as God is not a being defined by possibility, and is hence infinitely free, that creation inevitably follows from who he is.  This in no way alters the truth that creation, in itself, “might not have been,” so long as this claim is understood as a modal definition, a statement of ontological contingency, a recognition that creation receives its being from beyond itself and so has no necessity intrinsic to itself.

End quote.  Hart here says that “creation inevitably follows from who [God] is.”  He denies that there is “any ‘could have been otherwise,’” any “indeterminacy of the possible,” where divine action is concerned.  He says that this is consistent with the thesis that the world might not have been just “so long as” this is understood to mean that the world receives its being from something beyond it.  The implication, given the preceding remarks, is that it has nothing to do with any possibility of God’s refraining from creating it.

Now, given standard philosophical and theological usage of “necessary” and cognate terms, it is clear that Hart is asserting that God creates the world of necessity.  For example, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s article on “Contingent and Necessary Statements,” necessity is characterized as “what must occur,” whereas contingency involves “what may or may not occur.”  The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy defines “necessity” as “a modal property attributable to a whole proposition… just when it is not possible that the proposition be false.”  Wuellner’s Dictionary of Scholastic Philosophydefines “necessary” as “that which cannot not-be,” “that which must be and be as it is,” and “that which must act as it does and which cannot act otherwise.”  Obviously, Hart thinks God’s creation of the world must occur, given his nature.  He thinks that it is not possible that the proposition that God creates the world be false.  He thinks that God must act to create the world, that his act of creation cannot not-be.  Hence, again, given standard usage, Hart clearly thinks that God creates the world of necessity.

I emphasize this because, in at least some of the remarks Hart makes in reply to Rooney, he seems to deny that he thinks that God creates of necessity.  He asks: “[W]here did I ever suggest God was prompted by a necessity beyond himself – or even within himself?”  And he says that “I’ve always maintained that ‘necessity’ is not a meaningful concept in relation to God,” and indeed that “creation is not necessary for God.”  On the other hand, he also says that “creation follows necessarily from who God freely is”; that “it is impossible that God – the Good as such – would not create”; and that “God as the good cannot fail to be… diffusive” by creating.  And these statements entail that God does create of necessity as the term “necessity” is standardly used.  And again, the remarks in You Are Godsentail it too. 

All told, then, it is clear that Hart does not deny, or at least cannot reasonably deny, that he holds that God creates the world of necessity.  Rather, the most that he can try to argue (albeit, I think, unpersuasively) is that the specific sense in which he thinks that God creates of necessity is compatible with divine freedom and with Christian orthodoxy. 

To be sure, there is one clear sense in which Hart thinks that God does not create of necessity, insofar as he holds that God is free of “necessitation under extrinsiccoercion,” of “a necessity beyondhimself.”  Like Fr. Rooney, me, and the Christian tradition in general, Hart agrees that nothing outside of God in any way compels him to create.  For that matter, there is also a sense in which Fr. Rooney, I, and the Christian tradition in general agree with Hart that God acts of necessity in somerespects.  In particular, there is no disagreement with Hart when he writes: “Can God lie?  Can God will evil?  No and no, manifestly, because he is the infinite unhindered Good.” 

There is also agreement on all sides that there is no arbitrariness in God’s willing to create the world.  Hart characterizes Rooney’s position as “voluntarist,” apparently meaning that by rejecting Hart’s view that God’s nature makes it inevitable that he will create, Rooney must be committed to viewing creation as the product of a random choice with no rhyme or reason about it.  But Rooney takes no such position, nor does anything he says imply it.  Rooney, like the Christian tradition in general, would agree with Hart that God creates the world not arbitrarily but out of love.  What is at issue is whether this makes creation inevitable. 

In short, all sides agree that God is not compelled to create by anything outside him, that he cannot will evil, and that his will is not arbitrary or unintelligible.  What is at issue is rather this: Is there anything internalto the divine nature that entails that God could not possibly have refrained from creating the world?  Hart says there is, and Fr. Rooney and I (and, we claim, the mainstream Christian tradition in general) say that there is not.

Why does Hart think so, and why does he think his view is compatible with the tradition?  In his comments at Fr. Kimel’s blog, there seem to be at least five considerations that he thinks support these claims:

1. Hart says that “‘necessity’ is not a meaningful concept in relation to God” and that “necessity cannot attach to him who is perfect infinite act.”  The argument seems to be that since he is explicitly committed to these claims, he cannot fairly be accused of holding that God creates of necessity.  But there are several problems with this line of defense.

First, the argument seems to boil down to mere semantic sleight of hand.  Again, Hart holds that “creation inevitably follows from who [God] is,” denies that there is “any ‘could have been otherwise’” where creation is concerned, and so forth.  This counts as holding that God creates of necessity given the standard philosophical and theological use of “necessity.”  Hence, if Hart really is denying that he takes God to create of necessity, the denial rings true only if he is using the word in some idiosyncratic way.

Second, the claim that “‘necessity’ is not a meaningful concept in relation to God” is simply not true in the classical theist tradition within which Hart, Rooney, and I are all operating.  That tradition holds, for example, that God existsof necessity insofar as he is subsistent being itself, pure actuality, and so on.  Hart might respond that he is not denying that there is necessity in God in thatsense.  But then, it will not do to dismiss Fr. Rooney’s criticisms on the basis of the completely general assertion that “‘necessity’ is not a meaningful concept in relation to God.”

Third, Hart is in any case not himself consistent on this point.  For in his comments at Fr. Kimel’s blog, he asserts that “creation follows necessarilyfrom who God freely is,” and he compares God’s creation of the world to “a mother’s love for her child… [which] flows necessarilyfrom her nature, unimpeded by exterior conditions.”  Even Hart, then, allows that there is a sense in which he is committed to the claim that God creates of necessity.

2. That last remark from Hart is part of a second line of defense.  He writes:

[I]t is impossible that God – the Good as such – would not create, not because he must, but because nothing could prevent him from acting as what he is.  Is a mother’s love for her child unfree because it flows necessarily from her nature, unimpeded by exterior conditions?

End quote.  The argument here seems to be this.  There is a sense in which a mother’s love for her child flows of necessity from her nature, but we would not for that reason judge the acts that express this love to be unfree.  Similarly, if, as Hart claims, the act of creation flows of necessity from God’s nature, we shouldn’t judge that it is unfree.

But that this is too quick should be obvious from the fact that, say, a dog’s nurturing of her puppies is also necessitated by her nature – and it is unfree.  Hence, there must be some additional factor in the cases of a human mother and of God that evidences that they are free in a way the dog is not.  What might that be?

Well, in the case of the human mother, she could have decided not to have a child at all.  True, given that she does have the child, her nature, if unimpeded (by sin or by mental illness, say), will lead her inevitably to love the child.  But that’s a conditional necessity, and the antecedent could have failed to be true.  Unlike the dog (which has no choice in the matter) a human being can freely decide not to have children.  But analogously, even if God cannot fail to love the world if he creates it, his freedom is still manifest in the fact that he nevertheless could have refrained from creating it in the first place.

Note that this is compatible with saying that God creates the world out of love, just as it is compatible with saying that a woman might decide to have a child out of love.  That she wills to express her love by having a child to whom she might show that love does not entail that it was inevitable that she would have the child.  And by the same token, that God wills to express his love by creating and showing his love to his creatures does not entail that it was inevitable that he would create.

3. But in response to this, it seems that Hart would deploy a further argument.  At Fr. Kimel’s blog, a reader says: “Creation is unnecessary in that it adds nothing to God.  However, creation is inevitable given the boundless love of God.”  And to this, Hart replies: “Precisely.”  So, it seems that Hart would argue that, unlike a human mother’s love, God’s love is boundless, and that this is what makes his creative act inevitable.  For God to fail to create would entail some bound or limitation on God’s love. 

The problem with this is that it contradicts the reader’s first statement, to the effect that creation adds nothing to God.  For if God cannot be boundless in love without creating the world, then creation does add something to God – it completes or perfects his love.  This entails that God needs creation in order to be complete, perfect, unlimited, unbounded.  And this is no less heretical than is the claim that God creates of necessity.  Thus does the First Vatican Council teach that “there is one true and living God, creator and lord of heaven and earth, almighty, eternal, immeasurable, incomprehensible, infinite in will, understanding and every perfection” (emphasis added).  Of course, Hart would not be moved by the pronouncements of a Catholic council, but the doctrine is grounded in scripture and tradition.  For example, Matthew 5:48 says: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”  It is also a consequence of God’s pure actuality, for only what has some unactualized potential could fail to be perfect.

In my review of Hart’s You Are Gods, commenting on Hart’s view that creation follows inevitably from God’s nature, I noted that “it is hard to see how this is different from the Trinitarian claim that the Son is of necessity begotten by the Father; and if it isn’t different, then creation is no less divine than the Son is.”  Hart’s necessitarian view of creation is thus one of several respects in which, as I noted in the review, his position collapses into a kind of pantheism.  And as Pohle and Preuss note in their manual God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, against the traditional doctrine of divine perfection, it is precisely “Pantheists [who] object that ‘God plus the universe’ must obviously be more perfect than ‘God minus the universe’” (p. 188). 

Now, some of Hart’s readers have objected to my characterization of him as a pantheist.  But “pantheism” covers a variety of related positions, and even if Hart is not committed to everything that has been associated historically with pantheism, it does not follow that there is no reasonable construal of the term on which his position amounts to pantheism.  And as I noted in a recent exchange with Hart, he has himself admitted this, saying: “The accusation of pantheism troubles me not in the least… [T]here are many ways in which I would proudly wear the title…  I am quite happy to be accused of pantheism.”

But whether or not Hart thinks pantheism can be reconciled with orthodoxy, his critics do not.  Hence, it will hardly do for him to try to defend the orthodoxy of his necessitarianism via lines of argument that seem to imply pantheism, since this will simply beg the question against his critics, who don’t accept pantheism any more than they accept necessitarianism.

4. But Hart has another argument that might at first glance seem to be precisely the kind that should trouble his critics:

A God who merely chooses to create – as one equally possible exercise of deliberative will among others – is either actualizing a potential beyond his nature (in which case he is not God, but a god only) or he is actualizing some otherwise unrealized potential within himself (in which case, again, he is not God, but a god only). 

End quote.  Given that God is pure actuality, doesn’t it follow that he cannot have potentials of either of the kinds here referred to by Hart? 

But as every Thomist knows, we need to draw a distinction between active potency and passive potency.  Passive potency is the capacity to be changed or altered in some way.  It is passive potency or potentiality, specifically, that God utterly lacks by virtue of being pure actuality.  Active potency, by contrast, is the capacity to effect a change in something else.  And as Aquinas writes, active potency or potentiality is something that “we must assign to [God] in the highest degree.”

Now, I assume that Hart accepts this distinction.  If he does, though, then he should realize that his argument does not succeed, because the position he rejects does not entail attributing any passive potential in God (which would indeed be problematic) but rather only active potency.  And if he does not accept the distinction, then his argument simply begs the question against his critics, who do accept it.

5. Finally, Hart makes a point in defense of the orthodoxy of his position, claiming:

Not that I give a toss about Roman dogma, but the fact remains that there is no doctrinal rule regarding the metaphysical content of the claim that God creates freely… [W]hat I have written on the matter is one very venerable way of affirming divine freedom in creation.

End quote.  But I already explained what is wrong with this in my previous article.  For one thing, Hart is simply mistaken about Catholic doctrine.  The First Vatican Council teaches:

If anyone does not confess that the world and all things which are contained in it, both spiritual and material, were produced, according to their whole substance, out of nothing by God; or holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself; or denies that the world was created for the glory of God: let him be anathema.

End quote.  Fr. Rooney, in his own article, cited other Catholic magisterial texts.  Contrary to what Hart says, then, it isin fact a matter of Catholic orthodoxy that divine freedom is not compatible with the view that creation was not “free from all necessity” so that God created the world “as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself.”

Furthermore, I also noted in my previous article that the Catholic position has deep roots in scripture and the Fathers of the Church, citing texts from Clement of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius, Augustine, and Theodoret.  Further evidence could be given.  For example, as Aquinas notes, Ambrose teaches in De Fide II, 3: “The Holy Spirit divideth unto each one as He will, namely, according to the free choice of the will, not in obedience to necessity.”  And as Fr. Rooney has noted in the course of his recent exchanges on this topic at Twitter, Maximus the Confessor also denies that necessitation is compatible with divine freedom, writing: “If you say that the will is natural, and if that what is natural is determined, and if you say that wills in Christ are natural, then you actually eliminate in him every voluntary movement” (quoted in Filip Ivanovic, “Maximus the Confessor on Freedom”).

In responding to Fr. Rooney, Hart has been dismissive of any attempt to enlist the Fathers against him.  But he has not explained exactly how Rooney or I have misinterpreted them, or exactly howhis position can be reconciled with the passages we have quoted.  His argument boils down to a sheer appeal to his own personal authority as a patristics scholar (never mind the fact that not all patristics scholars would agree with his interpretations).  Suppose Hart had cited some text from Aquinas in an argument against me or Fr. Rooney.  And suppose that Rooney or I responded by claiming that Hart had gotten Aquinas wrong, but did not explain exactly how, merely saying: “We’re Thomists, trust us.”  Hart and his fans would regard this as an unserious response, and rightly so.  But this sort of thing is no less unserious when Hart does it.

All told, then, it is clear that Hart has failed successfully to rebut the criticisms Fr. Rooney and I raised in our earlier articles.

It’s an overdue open thread

We’re long overdue for an open thread, so here it is.  Now you can post that otherwise off-topic comment that I deleted three days, three weeks, or three months ago.  Feel free to talk about whatever you like, from light cones to Indiana Jones, Duns Scotus to the current POTUS, Urdu to Wall of Voodoo.  Just keep it civil and classy. 

Previous open threads can be viewed here.

Divine freedom and heresy

I commend to you Fr. James Dominic Rooney’s excellent recent Church Life Journal article “The Incoherencies of Hard Universalism.”  It is directed primarily at David Bentley Hart’s defense of universalism in his book That All Shall Be Saved, of which I have also been critical.  Fr. Rooney sums up his basic argument as follows:

If it is a necessary truth that all will be saved, something makes it so.  The only way it would be impossible for anyone to go to hell is,

1. that God could not do otherwise than cause human beings to love him or

2. that human beings could not do otherwise than love God.

3. There is no third option.

Both of these options, however, entail heresy.  This is why universalism has been seen as heretical by mainstream Christianity for millennia, for good reason.

End quote.  The article goes on to criticize both options at length.  Here I want to focus just on the first one.  It is related not only to Hart’s universalism, but also to his pantheism, which, as I noted in a review of his more recent book You Are Gods, Hart has now made explicit.  I there observed that:

Hart takes creation to follow of necessity from the divine nature.  For in God, he says, the distinction between freedom and necessity collapses, and “creation inevitably follows from who [God] is.”  This is consistent with the thesis that “creation might not have been,” he says, as long as what this means is simply that creation derives from God, albeit of necessity. Yet it is hard to see how this is different from the Trinitarian claim that the Son is of necessity begotten by the Father; and if it isn’t different, then creation is no less divine than the Son is.

End quote.  Fr. Rooney cites the same passage from You Are Gods, which includes other remarks such as:

For God, deliberative liberty – any “could have been otherwise,” any arbitrary decision among opposed possibilities – would be an impossible defect of his freedom.  God does not require the indeterminacy of the possible in order to be free… And in the calculus of the infinite, any tension between freedom and necessity simply disappears; there is no problem to be resolved because, in regard to the transcendent and infinite fullness of all Being, the distinction is meaningless.

End quote.  Note that Hart takes what amounts to a compatibilist view of divine freedom.  That is to say, he claims that God’s being free is compatible with his being unable not to create the world.  Now, as Rooney says, this contradicts Christian orthodoxy.  To be sure, the tradition affirms that God is unable positively to will evil, specifically, and that the ability to do so would indeed be a defect in his freedom.  But it also insists that he was nevertheless able not to create this particular world, or indeed any world at all.  For Christian orthodoxy, the claim is not (contra Hart) merely that the world could have failed to exist.  It is that God could have refrained from bringing it into being.  It is a claim not merely about the nature of the creation, but also about the nature of the creator. 

Though Hart couldn’t care less about Catholic doctrine on this subject, it is worth noting that the Church has formally defined this teaching.  The First Vatican Council declares: “If anyone… holds that God did not create by his will free from all necessity, but as necessarily as he necessarily loves himself… let him be anathema.”  Fr. Rooney calls attention to this and other relevant magisterial statements. 

But as Rooney also notes, this is by no means just a matter of current Catholic teaching.  It is the teaching of the tradition, going back to scripture and the Fathers of the Church.  Now, there are numerous passages from scripture and the Fathers that affirm God’s freedom.  Many of these, however, would no doubt be interpreted by Hart in a compatibilist way.  But there are also passages that rule out such an interpretation. 

For example, many divine actions are described in scripture in a manner that implies that God would not have taken them had certain contingent conditions been different, such as his punishment of sinners at the time of Noah and at Sodom and Gomorrah.  Of course, that does not entail that God really went through some reasoning process, as we do, before acting.  The point is that the clear implication of these texts is that people could have acted other than the way they did, and that had they done so, Godwould have done something other than what he actually did. 

II Maccabees 8:18 says that “almighty God… can by a mere nod destroy not only those who attack us but even the whole world.”  That implies that it is possible for God to refrain from conserving the world in being, and for traditional Christian doctrine his conservation of the world is the fundamental way in which he is its creator.  Matthew 19:26 says that “with God all things are possible,” which would not be true if God were by nature necessitated to create only the things he actually creates.

The Fathers also understand divine freedom in a way that rules out God’s being necessitated to do what he does.  As David Bradshaw notes, Clement of Alexandria says that “God does not do good by necessity, but by choice.”  (Does this conflict with the Christian doctrine that God cannot positively will evil?  No, because we can understand Clement as meaning, not that God could do evil instead of good, but rather that he could refrain from acting at all rather than doing some good action.)  Bradshaw also notes that Basil the Great rejects the idea that God creates “without choice, as the body is the cause of shadow and light the cause of brightness” (where he obviously takes these effects of the body and of light to be necessitated by them); and that Gregory of Nyssa holds that God created “not by any necessity… but because it was fitting.” 

Then there is this passage from Athanasius’s Four Discourses against the Arians, III.61, which contrasts God the Son with the things He creates:

Therefore if He be other than all things, as has been above shown, and through Him the works rather came to be, let not ‘by will’ be applied to Him, or He has similarly come to be as the things consist which through Him come to be.  For Paul, whereas he was not before, became afterwards an Apostle ‘by the will of God;’ and our own calling, as itself once not being, but now taking place afterwards, is preceded by will, and, as Paul himself says again, has been made ‘according to the good pleasure of His will’ (Ephesians 1:5).  And what Moses relates, ‘Let there be light,’ and ‘Let the earth appear,’ and ‘Let Us make man,’ is, I think, according to what has gone before, significant of the will of the Agent.  For things which once were not but happened afterwards from external causes, these the Framer counsels to make; but His own Word begotten from Him by nature, concerning Him He did not counsel beforehand.

End quote.  Athanasius here distinguishes what comes from God “by nature” from what comes from Him “by will.”  The Son proceeds from the Father by nature, whereas created things are made according to the divine will.  Since what proceeds from Him by nature is what proceeds of necessity, the implication is that what comes from God by will does not come from Him of necessity.  Athanasius also says that what comes about by God’s will involves “counsel” (or “deliberation,” as it has also been translated) and to say that something comes about this way implies that there could have been some alternative outcome.

Similarly, in The City of God, Book XI, Chapter 24, Augustine says that “God made what was made not from any necessity, nor for the sake of supplying any want, but solely from His own goodness, i.e., because it was good.”  And Theodoret writes:

The Lord created all things whatsoever He pleased, as Holy Scripture testifies.  He did not, however, will all that it lay in His power to do, but only what seemed to Him to be sufficient.  For it would have been easy for Him to create ten or twenty thousand worlds.  (De curand. graec. affect. 4, quoted in Pohle and Preuss, God: The Author of Nature and the Supernatural, at p. 44)

This implies that there are things that God coulddo but does not in fact do, which entails that the products of divine power do not follow with necessity. 

Bradshaw argues that even Dionysius the Areopagite can, contrary to what is often thought, be interpreted as holding that God could have refrained from creating (though the exegetical issues are complicated and I leave it to the interested reader to look at Bradshaw’s paper for himself).  Bradshaw thus judges there to be an “apparent unanimity of [patristic] tradition regarding divine choice.”

What became Catholic dogma is, then, well-grounded in Christian tradition, so that Fr. Rooney is, even by Hart’s lights, on solid ground in judging the view that creation follows of necessity from the divine nature to be heretical.  Yet in his brief comment on Fr. Rooney’s essay at Twitter, Hart remarks that “simply screaming ‘heretic’ isn't an argument.”

But Rooney does not “scream,” and he does not merely make an accusation of heresy and leave it at that.  Rather, calmly and at length, he explains why Hart’s position is heretical in the sense of being incompatible with other non-negotiable claims of the Christian faith.  And this is indeed an argument if one’s interlocutor is himself a fellow adherent of that faith.

The reason there is such a category as “heresy” in Christianity, whereas there is no such category in purely philosophical systems, is that Christianity claims to be grounded in special divine revelation.  Anything that purports to be a Christian position must be consistent with that revelation, and the notion of heresy is the notion of that which is not consistent with it.  Now, a Christian theologian who is accused of heresy might, of course, reasonably question whether the charge is just.  He can try to show that his position is, when correctly understood, compatible with Christian revelation.  But what he cannot reasonably do is dismiss considerations of orthodoxy and heresy tout court.  Again, by virtue of calling himself a Christian, he is committed to staying within the bounds of the revelation, and thus avoiding heresy.  And thus he is committed to acknowledging that to accuse a fellow Christian of heresy is indeed an argument.  It may or may not at the end of the day be a good argument, but it is an argument.

As I have complained in a recent exchange with Hart, one of the problems with his recent work is that he is not consistent on this point.  When it suits his interests, he will appeal to orthodox Christian tradition, and claim that his own views are more consistent with it than those of his opponents.  But in other cases, he will dismiss the standard criteria of Christian orthodoxy and appeal instead to merits that his views purportedly exhibit independently of questions of orthodoxy.  As I there argued, Hart’s approach isn’t, at the end of the day, that of a Christian theologian.  Rather, it is that of a theologian who happens to have been influenced by Christian tradition, but whose ultimate criteria are to be found elsewhere.  The considerations raised by Fr. Rooney, and Hart’s failure to take them seriously, reinforce that conclusion.

Related reading:

Hart, hell, and heresy

Scripture and the Fathers contra universalism

Popes, creeds, councils, and catechisms contra universalism

David Bentley Hart’s post-Christian pantheism

Whose pantheism? Which dualism? A Reply to David Bentley Hart

The latest on All One in Christ

Here are the latest reviews of my book All One in Christ: A Catholic Critique of Racism and Critical Race Theory .  Casey Chalk kindly reviews the book at The Spectator World.  From the review:

Feser’s short book contains several excellent chapters that define, dissect, and ultimately demolish CRT. Not for nothing does writer Ryan T. Anderson call it “the best book I’ve read on the topic.”…

I presume none of Feser’s CRT sparring partners will actually read this book – they have proved themselves so impervious to even the most charitable and tempered criticism that they seem a lost cause…

Perhaps, then, the best target audience for Feser’s pocket-size refutation of CRT are those who thought embracing it would place them in the “good guys” camp, but have begun to realize they were suckered them into a spiral of endless self-abasement.  There is no forgiveness or reconciliation in the anti-racist paradigm.  That would mean equity had been realized – an end-state anti-racists will never allow, because it would eliminate their (very lucrative) raison d’être.

End quote.  The Interim describes the book as “a brief but timely critique of Critical Race Theory that has taken hold of academia and is at the heart of the woke worldview.”  At The University Bookman, William Rooney says that “Feser shows that the Church has stood against racism from her inception to date,” and:

That understanding of the human person informed the Church’s condemnation of chattel slavery that arose with the discovery of the New World.  Feser cites an array of papal writings… that rejected slavery.

Moreover, writes Rooney, “Feser identifies a number of logical fallacies in the work of CRT authors” and:

In Feser’s analysis, Marxism, postmodernism, liberation theology, and CRT pivot on conflict, power, and domination among classes or racial groups.  The individual is marginalized, reconciliation is not possible, and division is necessary for victory.  The Catholic paradigm, in contrast, sees each human person as created in the image and likeness of God, as equally, individually, and uniquely sacred, and as called to love God and others with full mind and body through spiritual and corporal works of mercy.

End quote.  Recently I was interviewed about the book by Fr. Rob Jack on the radio program Driving Home the Faith.  Earlier interviews about the book can be found here.